A real life case for a tax cap

Casey Seiler

Published 5:15 am, Monday, May 30, 2011

A day after politicians, fiscal experts, union leaders and journalists had weighed in on the tax cap "framework agreement" reached by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, I called Geraldine Sullivan, who lives outside of Rochester in the village of Irondequoit.

By Wednesday, she was well-versed in the deal, including the provisions that rendered Cuomo's "hard" 2 percent property tax cap slightly softer.

"I'm with the governor on anything he can do to level the taxes," she said. "I think he's going to have a fight on his hands."

Sullivan, 81, doesn't mind a good fight. She's been active in the local Democratic organization for years, and still shows up when volunteers are needed to staff a phone bank. She battled the local tax assessor when her house was initially valued at $100,000. Ridiculous, she told them -- the Dutch colonial is a decade older than she is, and "everything's falling apart inside, including me."

Sullivan might be feistier than the average octogenarian, but she became the embodiment of tax-stressed property owners in January, when she took a day off from work to travel to Albany and attend Cuomo's first State of the State speech.

"Geraldine lives alone on Social Security and owns her own home," Cuomo said midway through his address. "Her home value, property value has gone down and her taxes have gone up. Geraldine could no longer afford to make ends meet. ... So at 81 years old, she went back to work as a lunch monitor at the local high school -- just to be able to stay in her home, and just to be able to stay in the state of New York."

The footage from the speech shows Sullivan initially trying to look grave: the Poster Senior Citizen for the corrosive effects of runaway taxation.

"Geraldine, we understand your problems," Cuomo said. "Help is on the way. We will pass a property tax cap, Geraldine, once and for all. And we ... applaud your spirit and your strength and your tenacity -- let's give Geraldine a big New York round of applause!"

By this point, Sullivan was blowing the governor kisses and absorbing the applause while flashing two V-for-victories.

"It was the most exciting day of my life," she said.

Sullivan, who retired after three decades at Bausch & Lomb, has actually been working at West Irondequoit High School for the past 14 years. She pays property taxes on her home (now reassessed at $70,000) and another small property she owns, and estimates her combined annual property tax bill at around $4,000.

Although the cap won't do anything to draw down her bill in the near future, "I'll be satisfied with anything."

Not everyone back home was enthused about her prominent role in Cuomo's speech. Sullivan works at a public high school; educators and advocates for school spending are the cap's staunchest opponents.

Sullivan was told she had been used by Cuomo's team.

"That's fine," she responded.

School districts are already living with deep cuts. The kitchen staff at West Irondequoit was just informed that the workday would be 45 minutes shorter because of a drop in enrollment. Sullivan wonders when falling paychecks will end up matching the rise in the price of the gas it takes her co-workers to get to work.